We all have it. Even if you grew up on TV dinners and toaster strudel, you've got a culinary history. And your family certainly does. And your extended family beyond that. But how much time do you spend thinking about what recipes your great grandparents loved and what that says about them?

We got to thinking about this after reading a great blog post over at Gherkins and Tomatoes last week entitled, "Why Bother With Culinary History?" The post discusses the importance of understanding your personal culinary history and a more social culinary history. In other words, we can begin to get a sense of how we got to where we are today, food-wise, by looking at where we all came from. And it's important to take a step back and look at how folks preserved and prepared food before we had all of the gadgets that we do today. Because we seemed to do just fine fifty years ago, one-hundred years ago.

What do you think? To what level do you consider your own culinary history and where you came from? How often do you think about the culinary history you'll leave behind: the recipes you loved to prepare for the holidays, the quick meals you threw together over and over, the special treats you'd splurge on?

To Learn More: Check out The New York Public Library's Online Culinary History Archive. It contains everything from links on the history of cider to information on sushi around the web. If you're at all interested in food, food history, or current trends you're going to like this one.